


tryst with a timeline

by reminiscence



Category: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni | Higurashi When They Cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 09:49:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8323288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reminiscence/pseuds/reminiscence
Summary: Possibilities exist only because it's impossible to prove they don't.





	

Possibilities exist, only because  
it's impossible to prove they don't.

Worlds aren't defined by integers.  
Worlds aren't defined by zeroes and ones.  
Worlds aren't defined by a set of rules someone  
scrawled into an 8mm ruled exercise book.  
Worlds aren't made by wishes, either.  
Worlds aren't made by dreams.  
Worlds aren't made up by stories  
one types up in between.

They exist. Far too many  
with far too many subtleties  
to count.

No two child is born the same.  
No two world is born the same.  
It's a game of lottery, a game of chance  
and there's a random algorithm  
picking her numbers every time.  
She dishes out a few extra coins  
with no guarantee she'll get them back  
when the payout comes,  
no guarantee she'll get a payout at all  
and she rarely does, like all good gambling games  
with large payouts on the screen  
and the one who beats astronomical odds -  
that's never her.

It's a joke, anyway,  
beating the odds: they're not a game  
of memory, where if you flip enough cards  
you can clear what's left behind.  
It's a game of flip the coin instead  
when you're on a row of tails, and still,  
there's no guarantee you'll flip a head  
next time: you only think you must  
because the outcome can't always be the same  
in a game of chance - but that's wrong.  
Zero is in the realm of probability. Never,  
and always is too.

She's getting tired of flipping coins.  
She has to flip them anyway.  
Keep on flipping.  
There's no point staying in a world  
filled with zeroes.  
If there's ever a one in those,  
she turns it into zero too.  
How unfair, that you can't turn  
zeroes to ones, too.  
Zeroes and ones. Tails and heads.  
She needs a world with all ones  
where the only zero is the villain  
she verses, but never knows.  
One, one, one... There's never enough  
of them and the ones that are there  
are quickly rounded off and curved.  
Zeros and ones. Tails and heads.  
She needs a row of ones  
and gets a row of zeroes instead.

Probabilities exist.  
Possibilities exist.  
She knows they're out there  
only because she knows  
they can't be not.  
She can only keep flipping coins,  
keep trying worlds,  
and hope she stumbles on the one  
where a line of ones is drawn.

Each one's a different tale  
and it's too much to calculate,  
too much to plan.  
Whole worlds were never able  
to be planned.  
Even with her narrow sights:  
her life, and her friends -  
was that too much to ask?  
Apparently so.

She doesn't find a carbon copy world  
but the chances of that  
exist as well, just the same  
as finding her world with all the ones  
and finding a world of nothingness.

Lucky she has the means to turn back  
and find another world.  
Most don't get the chance.  
Most don't die at ten, either,  
but even those who do don't get  
this chance. It's a chance, a possibility  
that no-one can prove it does exists  
and no-one can prove it doesn't  
but is it luck, to chase a tree  
that may be fruitless, or may  
bear fruit that odds that the bricks  
underfoot will never lead her too?

She keeps going anyway  
because she can despair or believe  
and she chooses to believe.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, b2 – over 30 lines poem.


End file.
